"Tail on here!" shouted out the petty officer, who seemed a rather grumpy individual, on our coming down to join the gang. "We don't want no idlers here!" With that, Mick Donovan and I gripped the handle of one of the cranks, two others of the new boys facing us; and we soon all found our places, clink-clanking away like the rest had done before we joined in. Indeed, we couldn't stop once we had started, but had to `sling on' whether we liked it or not, the handles of the pumps keeping up their up and down motion through the action of the others; so that if we had let go, we should have got either a tidy crack under the chin, or else been tumbled over on the deck. After half-an-hour's experience of this exhilarating labour, the petty officer sang out, "Spell ho!" and we left off the job, the pumps having sucked dry, and the bilge being thus clear for the day. We then returned up the two hatchways to the middle deck above, the boy messenger Larrikins being sent down by the direction of the master-at- arms to fetch us to be measured for our uniforms, the tailor having come aboard. The `snip' did not take long over his business; for he and his assistant, after putting their tapes round us, and punching `Ugly,' who would stoop, to make him really stand upright, promised that we should all have our new clothes by the following Saturday. "Hurrah!" said one of the novices near me. "I'll then be able to go home and see mother again!" "G-a-a, cry babby!" jeered `Ugly.' "Yer oughter 'a bin tied to yer mother's aprun string!" "Begorrah!" interposed Mick Donovan, "that's more'n ye could be afther! I doesn't think ye're afther havin' a moother at all. Faith, ye're too ugly fur inny one to own ye, save the divvle; an' he'd be a born fool fur his pains if he did." A laugh went round amongst us, which was only quenched by the master-at- arms singing out "Silence there!" and then; the lot of us were taken by Larrikins to the ship's steward, who served out to each of us a hammock and a pair of blankets, part of the outfit to which all second-class boys are entitled on joining the Navy, when a grateful country makes them a present of six guineas to furnish themselves with a rig-out! Mind you, though, this sum is not allowed to be spent at the sucking seaman's own discretion, but is laid out for him in a wardrobe of the most approved nautical type, suited alike to his wants and the requirements of the service.